The King's Concubine

Of us all it was Janyn who was struck down. He drew aside the sleeve of his tunic to reveal the whirls of red spots as we gathered for dinner on an ordinary day. The meal was abandoned. Without a word Janyn walked up the stairs and shut himself in his chamber. Terror, rank and loathsome, set its claws into the Perrers household.

The boy disappeared overnight. Greseley found work in other parts of the city. Mistress Damiata fled with disgraceful speed to stay with her cousin whose house was uncontaminated. Who nursed Janyn? I did. I was his wife, even if he had never touched me unless his calloused fingers grazed mine when he pointed out a mistake in my copying. I owed him at least this final service.

From that first red and purple pattern on his arms there was no recovery.

I bathed his face and body, holding my breath at the stench of putrefying flesh. I racked my brains for anything Sister Margery, the Infirmarian at the Abbey, had said of her experiences of the pestilence. It was not much but I acted on it, flinging the windows of Janyn’s chamber wide to allow the escape of the corrupt air. For my own safety I washed my hands and face in vinegar, eating bread soaked in Janyn’s best wine—how Signora Damiata would have ranted at the waste—but for Janyn nothing halted the terrifying, galloping progress of the disease. The empty house echoed around me, the only sound the harsh breathing from my stricken husband and the approaching footsteps of death.

Was I afraid for myself?

I was, but if the horror of the vile swellings could pass from Janyn to me, the damage was already done. If the pestilence had the ability to hop across the desk where we sat to keep the ledgers, I was already doomed. I would stay and weather the storm.

A note appeared under the bedchamber door. I watched it slide slowly, from my position slumped on a stool from sheer exhaustion as Janyn laboured with increasingly distressed breaths. The fever had him in its thrall. Stepping softly to the door, listening to someone walking quietly away, I picked up the note and unfolded the single page, curiosity overcoming my weariness. Ha! No mystery after all. I recognised Greseley’s script with ease, and the note was written as a clerk might write a legal treatise. I sank back to the stool to read.

When you are a widow you have legal right to a dower—one third of the income of your husband’s estate. You will not get it.

You have by law forty days in which to vacate the house to allow the heir to take his inheritance. You will be evicted within the day.

As your legal man my advice: take what you can. It is your right. You will get nothing else that is due to you.

A stark warning. A chilling one. Leaving Janyn in a restless sleep, I began to search.

Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Signora Damiata had done a thorough job of it while her brother lay dying. His room of business, the whole house was empty of all items of value. There were no bags of gold in Janyn’s coffers. There were no scrolls, the ledgers and tally sticks had gone. She had swept through the house, removing everything that might become an attraction for looters. Or for me. Everything from my own chamber had been removed. Even my new mantle—especially that—the only thing of value I owned.

I had nothing.

Above me in his bedchamber, Janyn shrieked in agony, and I returned to his side. I would do for him what I could, ruling my mind and my body to bathe and tend this man who was little more than a rotting corpse.

In the end it all happened so fast. I expect it was Janyn’s wine that saved me, but the decoction of green sage—from the scrubby patch in Signora Damiata’s yard—to dry and heal the ulcers and boils did nothing for him. Before the end of the second day he breathed no more. How could a man switch from rude health to rigid mortality within the time it took to pluck and boil a chicken? He never knew I was there with him.

Did I pray for him? Only if prayer was lancing the boils to free the foul-smelling pus. Now the house was truly silent around me, holding its breath, as I placed the linen gently over his face, catching a document that fell from the folds at the foot of the bed. And then I sat on the stool by Janyn’s body, not daring to move for fear that death noticed me too.

It was the clatter of a rook falling down the chimney that brought me back to my senses. Death had no need of my soul, so I opened the document that I still held. It was a deed of ownership in Janyn’s name, of a manor in West Peckham, somewhere in Kent. I read it over twice, a tiny seed of a plan beginning to unfurl in my mind. Now, here was a possibility. I did not know how to achieve what I envisaged, but of course I knew someone who would. How to find him?

I walked slowly down the stairs, halting halfway when I saw a figure below me.

‘Is he dead?’ Signora Damiata was waiting for me in the narrow hall.

‘Yes.’

She made the sign of the cross on her bosom, a cursory acknowledgement. Then flung back the outer door and gestured for me to leave. ‘I’ve arranged for his body to be collected. I’ll return when the pestilence has gone.’

‘What about me?’

‘I’m sure you’ll find some means of employment.’ She barely acknowledged me. ‘Plague does not quench men’s appetites.’

‘And my dower?’

‘What dower?’ She smirked.

‘You can’t do this,’ I announced. ‘I have legal rights. You can’t leave me homeless and without money.’

But she could. ‘Out!’

I was pushed through the doorway onto the street. With a flourish and rattle of the key, Signora Damiata locked the door and strode off, stepping through the waste and puddles.

It was a lesson to me in brutal cold-heartedness when dealing with matters of coin and survival. And there I was, sixteen years old to my reckoning, widowed after little more than a year of marriage, cast adrift, standing alone outside the house. It felt as if my feet were chained to the ground. Where would I go? Who would give me shelter? Reality was a bitter draught. London seethed around me but offered me no refuge.

‘Mistress Perrers.’

‘Master Greseley!’

For there he was—I hadn’t had to find him after all—emerging from a rank alley to slouch beside me. Never had I been so relieved to see anyone, but not without a shade of rancour. He may have lost a master too, but he would never be short of employment or a bed for the night in some merchant’s household. He eyed the locked door, and then me.

‘What did the old besom give you?’ he asked without preamble.

‘Nothing,’ I retorted. ‘The old besom has stripped the house.’ And then I smiled, waving the document in front of his eyes. ‘Except for this. She overlooked it. It’s a manor.’

Those eyes gleamed. ‘Is it, now? And what do you intend to do with it?’

‘I intend you to arrange that it becomes mine, Master Greseley. Enfeoffment for use, I think you called it.’ I could be a fast learner, and I had seen my chance. ‘Can you do that?’

He ran his finger down his nose. ‘Easy for those who know how. I can—if it suits me—have it made over to you as the widow of Master Perrers, and now femme sole.’

A woman alone. With property. A not unpleasing thought that made my smile widen.

‘And will it suit you, Master Greseley?’ I slid what I hoped was a persuasive glance at the clerk. ‘Will you do it for me?’

His face flushed under my gaze as he considered.

I softened my voice, adding a plea. ‘I cannot do this on my own, Master Greseley.’

He grinned, a quick slash of thin lips and discoloured teeth. ‘Why not? We have, I believe, the basis of a partnership here, Mistress Perrers. I’ll work for you, and you’ll put business my way—when you can. I’ll enfeoff the manor to the use of a local knight—and myself.’

So that was it. Master Greseley was not entirely altruistic, but willing with a little female enticement. How easily men could be seduced with a smile and outrageous flattery offered in sweet tones. He extended his hand. I looked at it: not over clean but with long, surprisingly elegant fingers that could work magic with figures far more ably than I. There on the doorstep of my erstwhile home, I handed over the document and we shook hands as I had seen Janyn do when confirming some transaction with a customer.

As I felt the grip of his rough clasp, I considered what I had just done. And how astonishing it was to me that an unpleasing face was no detriment to my achieving it. I had—as Greseley would say—a business partner.

‘You’ll not cheat me, will you?’ I frowned and made my voice stern.

‘Certainly not!’ His outrage was amusing. And then his brows twitched together suspiciously. ‘Where will you go?’

‘There’s only one place.’ I had already made my decision. There really was no other to be made. It would be a roof over my head and food in my belly, and far preferable to life on the streets or docks as a common whore. ‘Back to St Mary’s,’ I said. ‘They’ll take me in. I’ll stay there and wait for better times. Something will turn up.’

Greseley nodded. ‘Not a bad idea, all in all. But you’ll need this. Here.’ He rummaged in the purse at his belt and brought out two gold coins. ‘I’ll return these to you. They should persuade the Abbess to open the doors to you for a little time at least. Remember, though. You now owe me. I want it back.’

‘Where do I find you?’ I shouted, coarse as a fishwife, as he put distance between us, the proof of ownership of the manor at West Peckham stowed in his tunic.